


I Just Wanted to Be Sure of You

by Lauralot



Series: Alexander Pierce should have died slower [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Non-Sexual Age Play, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has Bucky Bear; it's only fair for Natasha to have something of her own.</p><p>Visiting a toy store wasn't strictly necessary, but if Tony wants to throw money around, no one's going to complain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Just Wanted to Be Sure of You

**Author's Note:**

> Increasingly this series is shaped by the idea of reviewers, because their ideas are much better than mine. This particular installment was inspired by three comments for [Love Is for Children](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1790728): two by [babydraco](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/11346127) and [Bluandorange](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/11360227) about Natasha's relationship with Bucky, and [this comment](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/13219644) by kellyc mentioning the toy store that appears in this story.

**Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh?" he whispered.**

**"Yes, Piglet?"**

**"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. "I just wanted to be sure of you.”**

\- _Winnie-the-Pooh,_ A.A. Milne

  


The robot is going to stroke his hair. 

Bucky is in the tower’s workshop. He is himself, seated at a workbench, with his left sleeve rolled up to allow Tony to perform maintenance on the metal arm. Tony is scraping in the grooves between the steel plates, sending flecks of color raining down onto the table. The last time Bucky was a child he had begged Steve to decorate the prosthetic, and now, three days later, he has still not successfully removed all of the paint. 

Dum-E is along the far wall but slowly wheeling himself toward the pair, clicking and trilling in Bucky’s direction. He is going to cross the space between them and run his claw over Bucky’s hair. It’s a foregone conclusion. Bucky doesn’t bother to struggle, resigning himself to the inevitable. He’s very good at succumbing without fighting; he’s had decades of practice. 

He watches the robot inch toward them in his peripheral vision, his own body rigid. Bucky is nervous almost all the time and has been for as far back as his memory reaches, but he is especially so in the workshop. It’s not Dum-E, not really. Dum-E is harmless. But he’s also sudden and unpredictable and when machinery gets near Bucky’s head it’s a struggle not to tear apart everything in arm’s reach. 

At least, it’s a struggle when he’s himself. When Bucky is a child the robot is funny and nonthreatening and possibly the most interesting thing ever. It’s a distinction that Dum-E seems to have noticed. 

And he also seems to have noticed that stroking Bucky’s hair will bring about that shift. 

Bucky tries to make himself as small and inconspicuous as an ex-assassin cyborg can possibly be. If Tony has noticed Dum-E’s movements—and given the way he’s muttering to himself about upgrading the plating to make cleaning easier, he likely hasn’t—he doesn’t say anything about them. 

It’s not that Bucky thinks the robot is malicious. He is tense and frightened and the stroking makes him not so. It’s meant to give comfort, but even if he could trust that the comfort is genuine and not that which demands restitution, he does not _want_ it. Bucky wants to be normal. To be in control. To be anything other than a broken and pathetic mockery of innocence. 

Taking in a breath, he tries to steel himself against the contact. He is not a child, he does not want to be a child, and no programming or abuse or caress is going to change that—

Cold metal brushes against his hair and Bucky leans into the touch, tension melting from his body. A small, shy smile forms on his face as he raises his head, mumbling a quiet “Hi.” He thinks that a second ago he did not want to be touched, but he cannot think of why. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony says, because Bucky has lived here long enough now for everyone to know what mindset he is in just from his voice or movements. “Almost done, okay?” 

Bucky nods. Dum-E taps at his free hand and Bucky raises it, meeting the robot’s claw in a long and detailed handshake Dum-E had taught him the last time he was in the workshop. 

**GOOD AFTERNOON, MASTER BARNES,** JARVIS says. He only calls Bucky “Sergeant” when Bucky is himself. **SHALL I LET CAPTAIN ROGERS KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?**

He shakes his head, following that with a quiet “Uh-uh” because while Tony has said that JARVIS can see them, it’s hard to remember that when Bucky can’t see JARVIS. It’s not that Bucky doesn’t want to see his daddy—he always does—but it’s been a while since he was last in the workshop. He isn’t in a hurry to go. 

**SHALL I LET MISS ROMANOFF KNOW?**

A nod. Tasha doesn’t play with him every time he’s around, but he doesn’t want her to feel left out. “Uh-huh.” 

“There you go.” Tony releases Bucky’s arm, then swipes his own hand across the table, probably to remove anything Bucky could use to “accidentally explode or mutilate” himself. “Hey, wanna see something really cool?” 

Resting his elbows on the table and leaning forward, Bucky nods again. Tony scrambles to retrieve whatever latest, really cool invention he’s been working on as Dum-E resumes petting Bucky’s hair. 

*

By the time Tasha steps into the workshop, Tony has shown Bucky five really cool inventions. Two of them were probably not what Pepper would call age appropriate and the part of Bucky that was an asset can think of a lot of lethal uses for them, but he doesn’t feel unsafe looking at them. He doesn’t feel unsafe around Tony in general. Tony’s Iron Man, and Iron Man is a good guy. 

So is Bruce, whom Tasha is leading through the door after her. In her other hand she holds the book of fairy tales she gave to Bucky. Pressed between the book and her chest is the bear that Daddy gave to Bucky two weeks after he moved into the tower. Bucky’s never seen Tasha hold Bruce’s hand before. He’s never really seen her around Bruce at all. He would have thought that she didn’t like Bruce, except Bruce is nice so that wouldn’t make any sense. 

“It’s good to see you, Bucky,” Bruce says, and Bucky smiles a little and stares at the floor. It’s not the first time he’s heard it, not even the first time from people who don’t want favors in return for kind words, but it’s still strange to hear. 

“I brought Bucky Bear.” Tasha presses the soft fur against Bucky’s hand and he smiles more, taking the bear and hugging him to his chest. 

“Thanks.” 

“Doesn’t it get confusing with two Buckys?” Tony asks. He had been the one to give Bucky Bear to Daddy before Daddy gave it to Bucky. “Ever think about renaming the little guy?” 

Bucky shakes his head hard, holding tighter onto the bear. “I can’t take Bucky Bear’s name away it’s his it’s bad to take people’s names away.” 

Tony looks the way he does when he manages to hurt himself while doing science. “That’s fine,” he says. “Better than fine! That’s actually awesome, as a matter of—”

“Bruce is going to read to us,” Tasha says. She talks over people sometimes and doesn’t have much of an indoor voice. 

Usually either Daddy or Clint tells the stories, but Bucky thinks that Bruce has a good voice. Plus his part of the workshop has soft blankets because he sleeps there sometimes, and he makes tea. Tea, to Bucky, doesn’t really taste like anything and it makes him tired, but Bruce likes him enough to make it for him and that makes it good. 

“Okay, what story do you want?” Bruce asks once everyone’s settled. Dum-E is on his left and Bucky and Tasha sit to his right. Bucky Bear rests on Bucky’s lap. He and the bear are closest to the pages, though Bruce holds the book at an angle so everyone can see the pictures. 

“Sleeping Beauty,” Bucky says. 

“You _always_ want Sleeping Beauty,” Tasha says. “All the princess does in that one’s lie around and sleep.” 

“But then she gets rescued.” That’s the best and most important part. 

“I’ll read more than one.” Bruce opens the cover, turning to the table of contents. “Natasha, what do you want to hear?” 

Tasha picks Peter and the Wolf. It is the second story they hear, and when Bruce gets to the part about the wolf eating the duck, Tasha takes hold of Bucky’s hand. She says this is providing moral support for him, but her other hand is tight on Bucky Bear and Bucky Bear is too brave to need to be held. Bucky thinks older sisters are allowed to be afraid of wolves too, and doesn’t say anything. 

Dum-E and Bucky Bear also choose stories, and by the time those are through Bucky’s cup of tea is empty and he is leaning against Bruce’s shoulder, eyes half-shut. His gaze keeps drifting down from the pictures and every time he looks at his lap, Tasha’s hand is winding through Bucky Bear’s fur or stroking his nose. He thinks it’s sad that he has a Bucky Bear and Tasha doesn’t have any animals, but then he’s too tired to think at all. 

*

On the back cover of the book of fairy tales is an adhesive sticker. It bears the bar code, price, and, most importantly, the name of the store: FAO Schwarz. JARVIS informs Bucky—Sergeant Barnes, now—that it is the oldest toy store in the United States and that it is located in New York on Fifth Avenue. 

Bucky had just assumed that Natasha found the book online. The thought that she went out of her way to go and purchase it makes his face flush, but his chest goes tight and he smiles a bit in spite of himself. 

There are nearly a hundred options for stuffed bears of the FAO Schwarz website, and bears are just one of over ten categories of animal. 

When Bucky was a real child, options for toys were limited to what one’s parents could afford or what was handed down. Steve’s mother had once made each of them a monkey out of old pairs of socks, he remembers. The Bucky Bear now was a gift from Steve; Bucky hadn’t selected it. If there were stuffed animals between his actual youth and the present, he can’t quite remember. The thought of choosing a toy is a novelty. 

They don’t sell stuffed toy spiders. He’s not sure what else Natasha might like. 

Well, no, that’s not completely accurate. Bucky is well aware of what she _wouldn’t_ like, and he is certain that she doesn’t want some tangible reminder of the play-acting she undertakes out of pity for him. 

It was forced on him, this sick game. He was too weak to resist it—too weak to fight becoming a soldier or a child or anything else HYDRA wanted to mold him into—and even now, free from them, he can’t shake it. Because he’s not really free and he never will be. And maybe, just maybe, Bucky could begin to accept that, if not for the way all of the Avengers pretend it’s no big deal. 

It’s the PTSD they worry about, the tendency to stockpile weapons he sneaks away when no one is looking. It’s the screaming in the night, the panic without orders, the struggle not to resume his mission and slit Steve’s throat. And those are problems, of course they are, but so is this. He is not a child. Children are vulnerable and helpless, and if he had one wish, it would be to never, ever be in a position of weakness again. 

But instead of working to excise this part of him, they only soothe it. And Natasha’s pretending, lowering herself to his shameful level, is just another facet of their misguided treatment. She doesn’t enjoy it. How could she? 

He replaces the book on the shelf and tells himself that he will not think of toy stores again. 

*

The next time Bucky thinks of toy stores, he finds Clint on the couch watching TV and gently tugs on his sleeve. He holds Bucky Bear close in his left hand; Clint mostly spends time with Bucky when Tasha is accompanying them, and he’s not sure if Clint actually likes him that much on his own. But Clint really likes Tasha and he probably knows better than Bucky what sort of animal she’d want. 

“Hey Bucky,” Clint says. “What’s up?” 

Bucky is not sure if he was taught to be painfully shy, or if that’s just the way little boys are when their daddies were…not the best. Either way, he can’t make himself speak, free hand wringing at the hem of his shirt, rocking a little back and forth on his feet. “I—”

“Yeah?” Clint’s voice is soft. He doesn’t look annoyed. “Feeling okay?” 

A nod. Bucky still can’t make words happen and he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better to start this conversation while hiding behind the couch. 

“You need someone to take you to the bathroom?” 

“I have a bear and Tasha doesn’t have anything,” he blurts out, hiding his face behind his hand. 

“Oh,” Clint says. He is quiet for a second and Bucky peeks over his fingers, waiting to be told that’s a dumb thing to worry about. After all, Bucky came up with it so it’s probably stupid. “Well in that case, we need to get her one, don’t we? There’s this big toy store where she got your book—we could get something there.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“We could get her a spider.” He looks much more excited about it than Bucky would have thought he’d be. “That’d be cool, right? All those legs?” 

“They don’t have spiders,” Bucky says. He’s stopped rocking. 

“Oh. Well then. Huh.” Clint pauses, bites his lip. He doesn’t seem to know what Tasha likes apart from spiders either. “We could take her there and let her pick something out. That would be fun.” 

Bucky hadn’t thought of that. He nods. That way, they can’t pick out the wrong thing. It’s a good idea. 

*

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Daddy says. 

“It’s a great idea.” Clint sounds a lot more sure about the whole thing than Bucky does. “It’s a giant toy store, Cap. Nothing bad ever happens in toy stores.” 

“It sounds very _public_ ,” Daddy says, and Bucky knows right away what he means. When Daddy tracked Bucky down after the helicarriers, he had found him in a place with a lot of people. And Bucky hadn’t wanted to come with him at first, so his daddy had ended up hugging onto him and reassuring him until he was ready to go. A lot of reporters had seen that, and a lot of people wanted to know why an Avenger was treating the Winter Soldier that way. A lot of reporters still want to know why. 

“Disguises,” Clint suggests, and Daddy gives him a look. 

“Couldn’t you let her pick something from the website?” 

“Does no one remember,” Tony asks, walking into the room, “that I’m a _billionaire_ in addition to a genius, playboy philanthropist? Seriously, no one? I mean, you’re living in my tower, I’d have thought that would sink in, but whatever. This toy store? Has a giant, functioning piano built into the floor. Yeah, we’re going.” He takes a cell phone from his pocket. “I’ll just buy out the place for a day.” 

Bucky glances at his daddy, who doesn’t argue. “Okay, fine. When do we tell Natasha?” 

“It’s a surprise,” Bucky says, and that must be a good idea because nobody argues. 

*

“Where’s Bucky Bear?” Tasha asks as soon as she gets in the van. Clint tries fastening her seatbelt but she waves his hand away; she’s old enough to do it on her own. So is Bucky, but Daddy still checked his once he was through. 

“Sam wanted to play with him,” Bucky says. He couldn’t take Bucky Bear to a toy store full of shiny, brand new bears. What if he felt replaced? This is the first time he’s ever gone anywhere without the bear, let alone out of the tower. His hand finds his daddy’s and holds on tight. 

Tasha gives him a very suspicious look, but then Tony is driving and Daddy is lecturing him about his driving and she seems distracted by giggling at the pair of them. 

Bucky thinks she figures out where they’re headed before they get there. About three-quarters of the way through the ride, Tasha’s smile changes. It becomes much smaller than when she was laughing, but it seems brighter to Bucky. She keeps glancing out the windows, straining to look farther down the roads, and when they arrive she grabs Clint’s hand and tugs him out of the car, racing to the doors. 

They are greeted by a man dressed as a toy soldier, who smiles and waves and ushers them in. The soldier has a bright red coat which looks not nearly as protective as Bucky’s own soldier clothes, but a lot less threatening. Smiling back, he waves his right hand; Daddy is still holding the left. There are a few people on the street snapping pictures with their phones, but the adults are ignoring them as they walk in, so Bucky does as well. 

“Told you he’d like the soldiers,” Tony is saying to Daddy. “We should have done the whole tour and breakfast with them. I mean, everyone here’s signed a nondisclosure act anyway—” Then they are inside and Tony goes quiet. 

They are in a big hallway, with giant cut-outs of more toy soldiers and stuffed giraffes as tall as the real animals. There are very many other things as well, but Bucky is still staring at Tony, who looks as if he’s never seen a toy store before. But he must have; he’s rich. Tony is still and his face is all lit up and the only thing that snaps him out of it is the phone going off in his pocket. 

“And that’ll be Maria,” he says, glancing at the screen. “Wanting to know just what the hell we’re doing. Boring. I’m gonna go take a look at all the science-y things and let Bruce know what he’s missing.” 

Bucky starts to ask if he’s gotten them in trouble with somebody, but then Tasha is hugging onto him so tight and fast that it almost knocks him over. 

“Thank you Bucky, thank you thank you thank you!” 

He can’t breathe enough to answer and when she lets go she grabs Clint’s hand and runs off before Bucky can speak. He smiles, trailing far behind them with Daddy’s hand in his. 

“You want anything, Buck?” Daddy asks, and he shakes his head. He’s happy with Bucky Bear, but it’s still fun to look. 

There are a lot of bears and dogs and cats, but there are also crocodiles and sea turtles and pigs and T-rexes. There’s even a sock monkey. Some of the toys are tiny, barely the size of his hand, and some are so big he thinks they’d be hard for even most adults to carry. 

He can hear Tasha’s voice ahead of them sometimes. “Look, an elephant!” she’ll say, or “Look, a peacock!” Clint will say something Bucky can’t hear, and then the both of them will laugh. He’s never heard her sound this excited before, not about Peter and the Wolf or Pixar or anything. It makes him smile. 

He remains smiling right up until he sees the rabbit. 

It sits on the corner of a shelf, white and fuzzy and in a pink dress. The rabbit he remembers was blue and without clothing, but he _remembers_ and Bucky goes cold and stiff and can’t help the whimpering at the back of his throat. 

“Bucky?” One of his daddy’s hands is on his shoulder, the other on his face, guiding him until their eyes meet, and Bucky shudders, trying to remember that _this_ is his daddy, that Daddy will never hurt him, that his last daddy is dead and not coming back. “What’s wrong?” 

“Bunny,” he mumbles, shaky. He had called it Bunny sometimes. Or Rabbit. Or once, he thinks, Rebecca, but then the next time he played with the rabbit he’d forgotten naming it. He remembers now. He remembers the rabbit and bubble baths and dinosaur pajamas and screaming, constant and hopeless, in the back of his mind and—

“Do you want the bunny?” Daddy asks, concerned, glancing from Bucky to the shelf and Bucky shakes his head fast. 

“Da—my last daddy.” He isn’t crying but he feels like he might, and that makes him wipe at his eyes. “He—I had a bunny.” 

Daddy looks sad and angry and scared all at once, the way he always looks when Bucky brings up his first daddy, but all he does is hug Bucky tight, shushing him softly and rubbing a hand up and down his back. “Come on,” he says after a moment, leading Bucky far away from the rabbit and the other stuffed animals. They stop at a part of the store full of candy. 

“What would you like?” Daddy asks. 

Bucky shrugs with only the faintest sniffle. “I’ve never had candy.” It might make him sick. Ice cream did that; he remembers that now too. 

“Sure you have. Here, I’ll get you the stuff you used to like, okay?” 

“Thank you, Daddy.” 

There are caramels and taffy and marshmallow cups and something Daddy calls nonpareils. They sit, with Daddy’s hand rubbing his back again. Bucky eats very slowly and very little, to keep from upsetting his tummy. 

Daddy’s phone chimes and he looks, laughs, and shows it to Bucky. Sam took a picture of Bucky Bear sitting in the kitchen, a bottle of honey in his paws the way a baby holds a bottle. “Having a sweet time! Love u – Bucky Bear” the message reads. Bucky smiles. 

“Hey tiger.” 

Bucky looks up from the phone and Tony is there, kneeling down. “Your daddy said you used to play the piano. Is that right?” 

His nod is shy; he knows that he did and Bucky thinks that if he sat at a piano now, the muscle memory would kick in, but he can’t actually remember ever playing. 

“Fantastic.” Tony extends his hand and, after glancing to his daddy, Bucky takes it. “Because not have I just found the greatest thing, but I need someone with your talents to pull it off.” 

Tony leads him to what looks like a keyboard except much, much larger and flat on the floor. It’s way too big to play by hand. Tony positions him at the right end of the board before letting go of his hand and moving to the other end. “Okay,” he says. “If you’ve played any piano at all, you’ll know this one.” 

Then he jumps onto the board and the keys _light up_ under his feet. Bucky stares, transfixed, a grin starting on his face as Tony uses his feet to begin picking out a harmony. Bucky can’t remember having ever heard it before but he knows it’s called Heart and Soul, and he knows exactly when to jump onto the keys at his end and begin the melody. 

Jumping around and making noise in the process is not something that has ever been encouraged as far as Bucky can remember. It’s nice, fun. He is smiling, not quite giggling, and when the song ends, there is applause. 

Bucky raises his head. Tony is slightly winded. Daddy, Clint, and Tasha are gathered around him, clapping. Tasha has some sort of stuffed animal draped over her shoulder, like a raccoon but orange-red. 

“What’s that?” Bucky asks. 

“A red panda.” Tasha approaches the piano and gently shoves Tony off of it, handing him the panda as she does. “And we’re gonna play Chopsticks.” 

They do. There is applause when that song is over as well and Tasha takes her red panda back from Tony, nuzzling its plastic nose against Bucky’s face before she hugs him. 

“This,” Tasha says, “is the best day ever,” and Bucky smiles. 

*

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says. 

He is standing in the doorway to Natasha’s bedroom. The red panda is resting on her headboard. Bucky is resolvedly not staring at the floor, because the least he can do is meet her eyes. 

“Sorry for what?” she asks. Like it isn’t obvious. Maybe she just wants to hear him say it, wants to take some satisfaction in watching him dig himself deeper. HYDRA would do that sometimes when he made them angry, he believes, back when he could barely form sentences outside of a mission report. 

He does look at the floor then. His friends are nothing like HYDRA and he hates himself for thinking it. 

“For dragging you into that.” Bucky tilts his head toward the red panda. “For…I know it’s just for me, all of it. To try and help me. It’s not—not anything you’d _choose_ to do, or want to, and I went and made it public.” 

Natasha stares at him. 

He’d thought saying it aloud would alleviate the pressure. The façade would be out in the open and she wouldn’t have to keep pretending it was some normal state of existence that she enjoyed. But the tension is only mounting. 

“You’re much smarter when you’re five,” she says. 

“What?” 

Natasha crosses her arms. “I know self-worth wasn’t exactly something HYDRA sought to instill in you, Bucky. So it’s weird how you’re almost egotistical in your self-loathing. You honestly think I’d run around and play pretend with you for weeks if I hated it?” 

“But—”

“You don’t get it.” She picks up the red panda, stroking a hand through its fur. “You got to have a childhood, a real one, before everything went to hell. Some of us never had that.” 

Natasha’s told him some about her time with the KGB. She’s never told him about what preceded before it. It hadn’t occurred to Bucky that maybe there hadn’t been anything before her life as a spy. He doesn’t remember much of his actual childhood, but what he remembers is comforting and kind and nothing like his time as an asset or as Pierce’s mockery of youth. He has that, at least. 

Maybe this is all Natasha has. 

He opens his mouth to apologize but she’s already speaking again. 

“And for God’s sake, Bucky, people like taking care of you. We’re all broken enough as it is and it’s nice to finally be able to reach out and shelter something, all right?” 

“All right,” Bucky says, partially because he doesn’t think she would lie about this and partially because he thinks he’ll be smacked with the red panda if he doesn’t agree. 

“Good.” She replaces the panda on the headboard. “Now, come on. We’re going to go spar until you don’t think you’re the worst person who ever lived, got it?” 

“And then Disney?” he asks. Natasha often follows up anything that could be construed as violent or aggressive with something comforting. Probably as a reassurance. Besides, he likes Disney. 

“Only if it’s not Sleeping Beauty.” 

Bucky makes a quiet sound of protest, but he figures that Natasha is the best sister ever and probably deserves to choose the movie this time.

**Author's Note:**

> [FAO Schwarz](http://www.fao.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=3810526) is a real NYC toy store, complete with Toy Soldiers, giant giraffes, a candy shop, and the floor piano as made famous [by the movie Big.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yu62StlsMY) They don't actually have stuffed red panda toys, though. At least, not according to their website.
> 
> Rebecca is the name of Bucky's sister in the comics.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] I Just Wanted to Be Sure of You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12399942) by [Eleke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleke/pseuds/Eleke)




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